


these days are numbered.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Castiel Whump, Fallen Castiel, Hospitals, Human Castiel, Hurt Castiel, M/M, teddy bear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-08
Updated: 2013-08-16
Packaged: 2017-12-04 15:17:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/712192
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>there is no point to this.  I wanted to write about Cas with a teddy bear.  that is all.  maudlin sentimental drivel, wip 3/5 chapters</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_"Cas-"_

"Dean?"

Several things happen very quickly then, but at the moment he's not in much of a position to notice them, and the last thing he sees before darkness takes over is a pair of frightened green eyes looking down at him, and he wonders, from a great distance, what had happened that had gone so wrong.

There's a soft, steady beat of electronic sounds coming from somewhere nearby, and beyond that he can hear voices, quick-moving footsteps, the clink of a glass against a counter; the rumble of wheels down a hallway, but he's alone: he's not sure of much right now, but he's sure of the stilleness around him.

He blinks, but nothing comes into focus, and everything  _hurts_ , from a fierce ache around his head to a sharp stabbing pain here, there,  _everywhere_ when he starts to move, first his legs and then his hands, and there's a bright sudden pain around his shoulders that doesn't go away.

He knocks against something with his arm, and it falls to the ground with a soft thud.  

"He's awake-"

Not alone anymore; there are several somebodies nearby, but none of them are the  _right_ somebodies, even if he can't quite remember just who the right ones are.  

"Start a new morphine drip, get him settled down."

There's a hand on his arm, moving it away and back to his side, and the back of his hand hurts along with everything else.  

"Looks like you lost your friend."

He opens his eyes, wanting rather desperately to ask which friend the woman means -  _why_ is he alone here,  _why_  aren't his friends all right when he's done everything possible to keep them safe - but all that comes into focus is a pair of unfamiliar brown eyes in a small, squashed round face.

"I'll just put this little guy back where he belongs."

There's the sound of movement close by, and the settling hand places something soft against his side, adjusting it in the crook of his arm.

Then there's a current of quiet relief that washes over him, and the aching starts to fade, and the last thought he has before he sinks back into an exhaustive sort of half-slumber is a vague, astonished wonder of who those odd brown eyes might belong to.

He wakes again; he can't tell how long he's spent drifting in and out of consciousness - it never lasts long enough for him to figure it out.

He's alone again.

 _Dean_ , he thinks, and for all the urgency that thinking this name calls up in him, he can't seem to build himself into a proper panic.   _Morphine_ , he tells himself, then  _Sam_.  

But there doesn't seem to be anything he's able to do about  _Dean_ , or  _Sam_ , or  _morphine,_ so he brings his hand up to rub at his face instead, and jostles the small soft thing by his side again.

What an unusual object, he thinks; it has the strangest face he's ever seen - though it is probably nota demon, some clearer part of his mind informs him.  Its brown eyes are small, its round face is squashed-in, and it is covered in brown fur.

He stares at the object, mystified, for quite a while, until his head starts to ache again.  The  _thing_ stares back, unblinking, wearing a morose expression.  He feels rather in sympathy with it.  

It looks almost as annoyed, and achy, and worried as he himself feels, and he wouldn't mind its presence so much if he knew exactly what it was, and if he knew what either of them were doing here.

A door slides open, he can hear a woman's voice.  

"Awake again?" she asks, and he nods,  _yes_ , and immediately regrets it.  She goes to his side, fiddling again with his hand, and wires, and he thinks:  _morphine._ He hasn't got long, he thinks, before he goes back into the almost peaceful darkness, so he asks the more important of the two questions he'd like to ask.

"My friends," he says, rasping; his throat is dry.  "Are they here?"

She gives him a pitying look.  "No, honey.  No one's allowed to be in your room.  You're in bad shape."

She touches his wrist lightly; it doesn't feel like an adjustment, but rather a gesture of sympathy.  "Someone must've left you this, though."

She points at the squashed brown thing, and he feels dubious.  Is he sure she means Sam and Dean?- because it  _does_ seem unlike them to leave him something so strange, something potentially dangerous.  

He might have to smite it, he figures, though admittedly the  _thing_  has yet to know any signs of demonic activity, but he's worried he might  _not_  be able to smite it, if pressed.  

"What... _is..._ that thing?" he rasps.

She laughs, not unkindly.  "It's a teddy bear."

He is swallowed under by the sea of morphine before he can ask any more questions.

He wakes up once, twice more; alone each time, and with every awakening the aching is duller and the worry is sharper, and both times he drifts off before anyone appears.  

So he lies there, full of worries that are all at once vague and acute, and hurting still, and feeling, as he never has before, rather hurt by this uncompromising solitude.  He wishes, impossibly, for someone familiar, a comforting presence, someone to make a noise that isn't soft electronic beeps; wishes for the sound of boots instead of soft-soled slippers.

He pushes the  _thing_ off his bed once, in a fit of hazy annoyance, but when he wakes up next it's back in place, curled up next to his side.

He stares at the  _thing_ each time he wakes up. It's just as hideous every time he looks at it, but that sort of stability is a comfort of its own, so he simply stares into its small brown eyes and wonders how it manages to looks so sad.

He can't move much; there are wires everywhere, but it he moves his hand slightly, he can always brush his fingers across the  _thing's_ brown torso, covered in soft fur, and he does this aimlessly, thoughtlessly, stroking his finger down the  _thing's_ soft brown nose.  

It doesn't seem to mind his touch, so he smooths his fingers across the fur, up and down, until he falls asleep again.

He wakes again, and everything still hurts, only less than before, and not all over: here and there instead of everywhere at once.  

He's not alone.

"Cas?"

He blinks, and then blinks again; the lights are bright and harsh.  And oh, it's Dean,  _Dean_ , alive and safe and sound; Dean, leaning over him with wide eyes and a tight, set face.  

"Dean," he grates. His throat is still dry, no matter how many IVs they hook him up to.  "Where were you?" he asks, hazy.  He's not at all sure this was the question he wanted to ask.  

It's decidedly the wrong question, after all, because Dean jerks his mouth, a tight, hard movement, and then looks away.  He wishes Dean wouldn't.  It seems particularly important that he be able to see Dean's eyes, since he hasn't for so long.  "We couldn't see you," Dean says.  "We're not your family."

 _Oh_.  So he really has been alone all this time.  He'd been hoping somehow Dean had been here before, even if only while he'd been asleep.  This hurts, far more than any aching limbs.  

He looks down.  There's the  _thing_ , still by his side, still looking up at him morosely.  "This thing's still here," he says helplessly, unaccountably annoyed by it, and Dean looks back at him.

"Thing?" he asks.  "Oh, the bear?" Dean picks it up, holds it up to his eyes.  He smiles at it, almost fondly.  "It reminded me of you.  Think it has lollipop disease?" he asks.

"It won't go away," he tells Dean huffily, and Dean quirks the side of his mouth into a proper grin.

"Yeah," Dean says.  "I asked the nurses to keep it with you.  So you wouldn't be lonely."

"Oh," he says.  He's still annoyed with the  _thing_ , but if Dean had gotten it for  _him_...

"I'd rather have had you here," he says.

Dean's voice is very quiet.  "Yeah.  Me too."

He suddenly thinks back to another thing Dean had said.  "What do you mean, looks like me?" he says, furrowing his brow.

"Something about the eyes," Dean says. He reaches out and touches the side of Cas's head, then, dragging his thumb across Cas's cheek.  "And it looks grumpy all the time.  Like you."

"I'm not," he objects, and moves his hand restlessly against the sheets; he wants something to touch.

"I'd like it back," he tells Dean, blinking slowly into his eyes.  

"You want the bear back?" Dean places the  _thing_ back by Cas's hand, and he runs his fingers over the soft brown fur again, feeling oddly soothed.  "Sure, buddy."  

Dean's voice is so quiet it's hard for him to believe that it's really Dean.  Cas closes his eyes.  "Are you going to tell me what happened?" he asks.

Dean's voice aches like the bones in his back.  "I'll tell you later.  Go back to sleep."  His fingers are back on Cas's face, gently touching the hair around the side of his head.  "You sure saved our bacon, Cas.  You were real brave back there."

He lets the touch settle him, feels himself prepare to float away.   "...my wings?"

Dean's fingers still.  "You wouldn't be here if you still had 'em, Cas," he says, gruff.

"Oh," he says.  He suspects Dean's hands wouldn't be running up and down the side of his face if he still had his wings.  He thinks he wouldn't have allowed it.  

Something must have changed, he supposes, and he thinks he can recall, somewhere in the midst of all the vague hazy memories of what had happened  _before_ , Dean kissing him, quick and terrified and desperate, his hands holding Cas's face, just like he's doing right now.

"You'll come back?" he asks.  "When I wake up?"

"Yeah," Dean says, and he's being kissed again, on the forehead this time.  It's the only part of him that doesn't hurt.

"Goodnight, Cas," Dean says quietly, and his hand drops away to gently pat the  _thing_ on its squashed, round head.

"Goodnight, Dean," he says.  "You can leave the bear." 

 

 


	2. Chapter Two

Dean comes and goes.  So do the nurses.  The  _thing_ stays put, mostly, and so does Castiel.

He comes crashing back to consciousness with a jolt, and it's a several disorienting seconds before he understands that the figure looming over him is Sam, looking furtive, looking guilty.

"Sorry, Cas," Sam's saying.  He's leaning over the bed, awkward and hesitant, fumbling uselessly with the wires taped around Castiel's arm.

"I think," Castiel says.  The words come out slowly, resistant.  Too heavy against his tongue. "You might have to call the nurses.  For that."

Sam takes his hand away immediately.  "I was just-" he shoves the  _thing_ back among the blankets.  "Giving this back."  

The  _thing_  - he knows what it is, really, a stuffed animal Dean had given him not so long ago, but he can't seem to get out of the habit of calling it the  _thing_ \- lies there, somewhere in the folds of the blanket around Castiel's knee, all limp brown fur and staring at the ceiling with glassy dark eyes.  He wonders where it's been all this time. He hasn't seen it the last several times he's been awake.  Neither has he seen Dean.  He wishes Sam would leave him alone.

"You feeling all right?"

Castiel lets his head fall back on the pillows.  Looking up at Sam takes a toll on his neck.  "I  _wish_ ," he remarks carefully to the ceiling, "that everyone would stop asking me that.  I am not feeling all right." 

He keeps his eyes firmly on the ceiling: cracked and peeling tiles, a stain in the shape of a rabbit. Curious.  He hears Sam sigh.  His boots squeal against the worn linoleum floor.  He looks back at Sam.

Sam runs a hand through his hair.  He fidgets, when he's uncomfortable.  Neither he nor Dean are fond of hospitals.  

He doesn't really want to be here; Castiel can tell.  "You can go," he tells Sam.  "You don't have to stay." 

"No," Sam protests immediately, "that's not-"  All at once he seems to fix his mind on something, firmly.  He grabs the lone chair in the corner of the room - Dean had stolen it from the waiting room and moved it inside his room, once - and drags it over to Castiel's side, sitting down.  It's easier to see all of him, this way.  But he drums his fingers against the armrest.

 _Fine_.  Castiel turns his head away and closes his eyes, so he won't have to see Sam sitting there.  Several long moments pass.  Eventually Sam speaks.

"Um," Sam says.  He sounds uncertain.  "Cas? Do you want me to go?"

" _Yes_ ," Castiel says in response.  He doesn't open his eyes.  He hears Sam sigh again, and he knows, without looking, that Sam's rubbing at his face.  He continues to lie still.  Any minute now Sam will get up, and the hospital door will slide shut with a gentle  _whoosh_.

But Sam doesn't leave.  Castiel feels him pick up the _thing_  again, toying with it.  "Put that back," he orders without opening his eyes.   When nothing happens he finally turns his head back around.  Sam's holding the  _thing_ in his hands, elbows on his knees, staring pensively at his lap.  

"I'm sorry," Sam says, more to the  _thing_ than to Castiel.  

Castiel takes a moment to consider this statement.  "It's not your fault," he says finally.

"Yeah, I know."   Sam looks up then.  "Well, I just thought-" he hesitates.  But Castiel's decided to hear him out.  "I thought you might want some company."  He smiles, but there's no real humor in his face.  "Even mine."   

"No one wants to tell me when I can leave," Castiel says.  He's never noticed, particularly, how  _tired_ Sam looks at times.  Like right now.

"They're not sure you will," Sam says.  He doesn't look away.  

"Oh," Castiel says.  He feels like he's been waiting to hear something like that for quite a while now.  He thinks he shouldn't be so surprised to hear Sam say it.  But he is.  

Sam twists the  _thing_ around in his hands.  Castiel wishes he would stop. "He's taking it pretty hard," Sam tells him, like a confession, and Castiel doesn't need to ask who he's referring to.  He thinks of Dean, conspicuously absent.   

 _I never thought our plan would really work_ , he thinks, trying to be resigned, but a part of him stubbornly resists that line of thought and says instead  _i_ _t's not fair.  He only just picked me._

Sam reaches to the floor, picks up a bag.  "I brought you some stuff," he says.  "You want me to read something?"  He's all easy confidence, now, solid as any rock.  No landslide could shake him away now.

He must see something in Cas's face, because he pauses, the bag half-way open.  "I don't want to go, Cas," Sam says, soft, and Castiel thinks maybe Sam picked him, too, maybe the same moment Dean had, only Castiel hadn't noticed.  He wonders what Sam would think if he said that he'd picked both of them, long ago.  

He thinks Sam might understand anyway.

"Should I really call the nurses?"  He's touching Castiel's arm again.  

"No," Castiel says.  "You've fixed it."  He's certain that the peace lily in his window is Sam's doing.  So is the blue plaid shirt that's lying at the foot of his bed.

He sighs anyway, loudly.  "Should I braid your hair?" Castiel asks him, gruff despite himself, and at first Sam looks confused.  Then he smiles, just a little.  

"Sure thing," he says.  "I'll even let you paint my nails."


	3. Chapter Three

Sometimes he feels Dean holding his hand.  He's never sure if it's real or not.  Most of the time when he gets around to opening his eyes, Dean isn't there. Only a single chair next to his bed, and a vague remembrance of hearing someone's voice.

Maybe it ought to feel pleasant.  Castiel isn't sure.  He knows humans hold hands for many reasons, but he doesn't think anyone has ever taken his hand in this careful way before.  That light pressure he thinks he feels gripping his fingers doesn't make him feel comforted. Feeling those maybe-touches of fingertips brushing across his palm drags him to alertness like nothing else.  Feeling another hand holding his own wakes him up, makes him struggle to move his head and fight to open his eyes, but as soon as he stirs, the hand is gone.

He thinks Dean might have been here, not so long ago.  There's another plant on the table next to his bed, a miniature rosebush with dark red petals no bigger than his fingernail and with opened buds no wider across than the pad of his thumb, with branches that trail over a minuscule white trellis.  He thinks it might be Dean who leaves him flowers, these days.  The flowers show up even when Sam doesn't stop by.  And Sam brings him other things.

Sam brings him thrift store-purchased patchwork quilts and spreads them out over the foot of his bed.  Sam brings cups filled with ice chips when he tries to pull off his oxygen tube after his throat's gone dry and his tongue has swollen.  Sam brings him plastic spoons stolen from cabinets at the nurses' station and passes him ice chip after ice chip, and fixes the oxygen tube back in place under his nose no matter how many times Castiel tries to knock it away.   Sam brings him napkins and wipes away the blood that drips from his nose when he sits up and the blood left on the side of his face after he coughs.

Today Sam's brought him socks.  A packet of thick knitted socks, in white and blue and gray.  He wakes up to Sam putting the gray pair on his feet, tugging each sock carefully over his foot and up to his ankles and folding the tops back down.  

For the first time since he can remember waking up to oxygen tubes and wires he thinks he might be starting to feel warm. Before, he remembers, before, he'd been hot, burning hot.  He had felt as though he were on fire.  Maybe he had been.  Now the fire's left him, and he only feels cold.

"You're awake," Sam says, like he's surprised, but when Castiel starts to reach for the oxygen tube, Sam just grabs his hand and pulls it away before it gets close to his face like he was anticipating the move. 

"Hey, cut it out," he says, soft.  "You know you're not supposed to do that."

Castiel does know.  The nurses tell him that too, though they won't tell him anything else.  He tries again anyway.  He hates the feeling of having something on his face.  Trying to get rid of the oxygen tube has become the first thing Castiel does whenever he wakes, after looking around for Dean.  

Sam just tugs his hand away again, and rests it back on top of the sheets. He sticks a small brown teddy bear in Castiel's hand, and, thus diverted from his mission, Castiel holds on to it instead.  He squeezes the bear tightly around its small soft body.  He doesn't like the feeling he gets when his hands are empty.  

"I was just about to go," Sam tells him. "We're not supposed to be in your room much longer."

Castiel can't help but glance at the empty chair.  Sam says  _we_ like Dean ought to be here.  Only he isn't.  

Sam catches his glance.  With ruthless authority, he starts adjusting the pillows tucked under Castiel's knees and forearms and behind his head.  It doesn't help much.  Castiel has found that he will be uncomfortable no matter how many times Sam moves his pillows.  He wants to turn over on his left side, but he has discovered Sam and the nurses won't let him.

He's starting to seriously wonder if he's only been dreaming about holding Dean's hand.  He's found that he dreams even when he thinks he's awake.  He dreams of conversations that never happened, of memories that don't really exist.  He remembers taking the syringe out of Sam's hands.  He has killed hellhounds, he remembers.  He has saved an innocent soul.  He can finish this task.  He remembers a woman with frightening blue eyes hair bringing her hands up to his face and drawing him down to kiss his forehead.   _A blessing_ , she says.   _You will be welcomed home._ Sometimes she looks at him with sorrow.   _Sam will die._

He remembers sitting in the front seat of the Impala.  He remembers standing next to Dean on a pier by a river, the way the wooden boards shake underneath their feet as the water runs past.

He mentions it to Sam.  "What river, Sam?" he asks.  "What river was that?"

But Sam says, no, that never happened.  There was never any river, Cas.  You dreamed that.

He thinks his sister might not have kissed him.  

He remembers other things.  He remembers hearing a demon screaming, he remembers the sound of stained-glass windows shattering in their frames, remembers the church shaking as rafters crumbled and walls collapsed. 

He remembers the long streaks of ash charred across the wooden floor, the imprint of feathers burnt into the pews and scorched into the altar-cloth.. 

There are things he  _does_ know.  Sam confirms each memory, yes or no.  Yeah, Cas, he says, those were wings.  Yeah, Cas, the church burned down.  No, Cas, the demon didn't die.  Yeah, Cas, it's over now.  The gates are closed.

"And you're safe?" he asks Sam.  He feels anxious over that, as much as the morphine will allow him to.  He thinks Sam might be growing tired of answering this particular question, but he can't stop himself from asking it every time.

"Yeah," Sam assures him once again, before he leaves the room.  "Yeah, Cas, I'm safe."

 

He dreams that Dean is holding his hand again.  "I want him to be cranky," Dean is saying. "Pulling at that goddamn tube again.  I don’t like him being so quiet."

He dreams of hearing them argue. Sam thinks Dean's being selfish. 

"This isn’t about me," Dean snaps. "It’s about what’s best for him.  I'm not gonna give up on him  _now_."

Sam's voice, resigned.  "It should have been me."

"Don't be stupid.  You'd be dead right now."

"And this is a better alternative?"

Dean, furious.  With him.  This seems about right. Castiel prefers it when Dean is angry.  He thinks it might mean that Dean still cares.  "You weren't supposed to do this," he's saying, and he's holding Castiel's hand so tightly that it hurts.  "All I said was  _stop Sam_.  That's all I meant.  That's all I wanted."

Dean, quiet. His hand is shaking very slightly. "I know I said you could have anything, anything you wanted as long as Sam was okay, but please, please. Not this. I can’t do it without him, either. Not him." 

It might not be a dream this time.  He wakes up to find Dean holding his hand, smoothing his rough fingers over Castiel’s knuckles, tracing soft lines on his palm.  It feels almost real.  

"Dean," he says.  His throat aches.  He wishes for Sam and his ice chips.

Dean's voice is gratifyingly immediate.  "I'm right here," he replies.  "How you feeling?"

"Ugh," he says.

"Yeah, ugh.  I bet."

"You're holding my hand," Castiel observes.  So maybe all those dreams hadn't been dreams after all.

"Yeah," Dean says.  "You keep grabbing at things."  

"Oh."  He pulls his hand out of Dean's grip.  Dean lets him go.  "You're never here."

Dean looks away. He just says, "I'm pretty pissed at you, buddy."

"You keep leaving."

"Sucks, don't it?" Dean says.  "When you're friends with someone that never sticks around."  But he leans over the bed and takes Castiel's hand back.  He squeezes hard. His fingers are sweaty.  "I could stay.  If you wanted."

"Yeah.  Don't go."

"Okay," Dean says.  "You look like you could use a rest.  Take a nap."

"Yes," Castiel agrees.  He closes his eyes on the image on Dean’s face. "That would be nice."

 "Don't worry about me," Dean says.  "I'll be here."

"The nurses will kick you out," Castiel tells him.

"Nah.  Not this time.  You're in a new room.  I can stay as long as I want.  All night, even."

It does look different.  The walls are green, not white.  The window is on the other side of the bed.  Castiel had been putting those changes down to the fact that this was probably another dream. "Are you sure?" Castiel asks him. 

"Yeah," says Dean.  "I never left, you know.  Been around here the whole time.  They've got these waiting rooms.  No couches, but there's free coffee.  Not too bad.  You could have asked for me."

Castiel thinks about that.  "I didn't know that I could."

Dean's hands are better than the socks.  His fingers are starting to feel warm again.  

"Okay, well.  Now you know."

 


End file.
